Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

The morning of September 11, 2001 was an exercise in surreality for me. I had just finished up working for the summer at Sequoia National Park, and after 3 months of nothing but trees, bears, and busloads of tourists I was ready to return to the city, craving nightlife, dancing, and the company of my gay brethren. Thusly, I headed down the mountain to San Francisco, and so it was that I had just barely put my head down after a long weekend of clubbing that I was startled awake by my friend Joe screaming that “They just destroyed the World Trade Center!” as in the distance I heard the sounds of sirens wailing across the city.
Since San Francisco also has a World Trade Center, I foggily assumed this is what he was shouting about. I guessed that by the sounds of the fire engines coursing down Market Street, there had been a terrible accident—a fire perhaps, or worse, a bombing along the scale of the Oklahoma City tragedy.
I was unprepared, as were most Americans for the reality of the attacks on the twin towers, and later we were to discover on the Pentagon, by terrorists using airplanes as missiles. The sirens I heard in San Francisco were sounded in response to the ensuing panic which spread across the country like a firestorm as the nation went on red alert, and ports closed, railways shut down, airlines were grounded, and traffic across bridges halted.
To our credit, my countrymen initially reacted with compassion and a desire to help our own wounded, and the American Red Cross was inundated with blood and cash donations. EMT ‘s, nurses, and doctors rushed to New York along with a myriad of social workers, psychologists, and clergy members from all faiths to support the rescue efforts as our political leaders strove to piece together the how’s and why’s this terrible event managed to occur.
In my own dazed reality I rushed across the country to New York City to lend a hand as an EMT or with my Search and Rescue dog.
Later I would write:

I hesitate to begin to tackle the immensity of describing the scene, so let me just say that it was not anything the mind could take in and process or fathom in any way that might later be described accurately to an audience who had not been there themselves. I have studied a fair amount of physics and chemistry and geology, and yet there was no way my brain could sort out the awesome forces that came together that morning and left such a complete ruin of so large an area. I was told later that nearly all of the concrete and plaster and drywall in the buildings just vaporized (hence the persistent clouds of dust even then) and without that support material, most of what came tumbling down was the wiry metal skeleton of the building: girders, “I” bars, rebar, wire mesh and pipes. hoses, and cables, and mile after mile of circuitry, and the only thing that I could think of looking upon the twisted mountain of metal and plastic was that it looked as if a giant had emptied out the waste bin under the world’s largest paper shredder. I guess you expect rubble and bricks and broken glass and such, but this twisted, knotted, mass of man-made vines dumbfounded me, plain and simple.
The streets around the excavation area ring out with the clatter of gigantic cranes and steam shovels and bulldozers and dump trucks, and the entire site is illuminated by massive banks of flaring white lights, and yet, there is a silence that stretches for blocks and blocks away, a somberness that shushes petty conversation. Despite the thousands of lights, also there too is a darkness that hangs over the devastation--a miasma of sorrow and soot and pain and dust that baffles and muffles the area against the intrusions of light and sound. There is no music.
I felt Tucson push his nose into my hand, and he leaned against me somberly, and when I looked down at him, I noticed a huge cockroach attached to Kent’s jeans, but after he brushed it off, it just lay stunned on the ground and made no move to skitter away before he stepped on it. I think that’s when it really hit me, because you always hear about how resilient roaches are supposed to be, that they are the ultimate survivors in Earth’s history, and how even after nuclear war, they would somehow carry on in the aftermath. Not so, this one; it just gave up hope and lay there, resigned to whatever fate befell it next. Yeah, I know that sounds fucked up--to get disturbed by a roach that didn't run, but I think that’s the point: it just seemed so unnatural, so out of place. You’d think he and his 50,000 kids would be in hog heaven, scurrying about, feeding and breeding like there was no tomorrow. But instead it just lay still, waiting to be crushed, perhaps believing that there was no tomorrow, so what’s the point of running today?

Why? WHY?
That question was paramount in my mind. While the FBI and the CIA and Interpol compiled reams of lists of probable suspects and enemies of the state, and think- tanks and generals and tacticians and priests and politicians and psychologists and analysts met and discussed and theorized about the how of the attacks, few press releases answered my nagging question. I didn’t care about the specifics of how it happened. That point seemed to me irrelevant. Why was tantamount, because I think deep down inside me, as I reckon deep down inside everyone, we already knew: the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington were executed not from some blind hatred that had been instilled in the twisted minds of some godless, subhuman barbarians from the other side of the world. No, even before the secret files were let to light, even before Michael Moore or Robert Greenwald compiled their shocking documentaries on the backlash of CIA-trained Osama bin Laden, we knew that the hatred evinced by such cold-blooded, elaborately planned attacks was justified. That it was born out of a natural craving for vengeance. Retaliation. To some, justice.
Yes, Justice.
To paraphrase Proverbs, “As ye sow, shall ye reap.”
Bitter and bloody has grown our harvest, but out crop is not all that surprising, whatever the pundits claim.
Vengeful acts are the common response to hatred, and hatred is the common response to anger, which in turn arises from fear. Fear is bred from ignorance and lies, and so the focus to which we ought to strive is education of the ignorant with truth, no matter how stark, incriminatory or self-indicting.
And the truth is: culturally, we all have bloody hands, and we’ve all made shameful errors, we, or our fathers or our grandfathers. No family across the globe is without murderous stain, yet in acknowledgement of this, we can seek to rise above the sins of our forefathers and bring peace to the world.
Living in peace is ultimately the goal of religion, and so let us then, acknowledge and examine some of the sins of the three Abrahamic religions which hold sway on this planet as well as discourse on several of the other options we have at hand for honoring human life.

The “Downtrodden”.
For starters, we have Judaism. An inside joke runs, “How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. You go ahead, dear, and I’ll just sit here in the dark by myself…”
Without dissecting the tenets of the faith which would take entire libraries of discussion, let us agree that the entire religion is based upon guilt and guilty feelings, perhaps not even for actions one has done in his or her lifetime, but guilt for the deeds of one’s forefathers, which in the eyes of an eternal God are just as bad.
And God, in a literal, Abrahamic reading of the Torah is a fearsome, jealous, and vengeful god. Rule Number One is to have no other gods before him, and Rule Number two is Respect Thy parents. In general most other platitudes such as doing unto they neighbor et al falls by the wayside before these two Commandments. Obedience unto the womb that bred thee and the hand that raised thee are paramount, and the wages of sin---well, they are self-evident.
From the moment of birth humans have sinned, Original Sin having arisen from the times of Adam and Eve who disobeyed God’s Law and ate of the Tree of Knowledge
Of Good and Evil, Evil circuitously being defined as disobeying God’s Law. Eve (and all women thence) is cursed with the pain of childbirth, and children themselves are cursed for giving their mother’s pain and so forth ad nauseum.
God will later test the sons of Adam successively throughout the stories of the Torah/Old Testament/Koran using the parable of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his firstborn son, Isaac unto God as a measure of faith despite Abraham’s natural inclination, (This type of unquestioning faith goes against many aspects of Eastern religions such as Taoism, as we shall discover.) and it is because of his devotion that God rewards Abraham with the land of Israel (a point of contention to this modern day.)
However, over the ages his people sway from their faith in Him and thereby need to be punished (by losing Israel and becoming slaves) and subsequently are led to re-discover Him through his prophets and kings (and are rewarded with Israel) of whom Moses is arguably the favorite, although one can also make a case for David or Solomon.
The cycles of slavery/destruction and righteousness/ triumph form the basis of Scripture, as a long line of succession ensues with the sinners swaying from God, the Father, and the saviors returning to God.
Ultimately, a schism erupts when Jesus Christ arrives who is both a faithful rabbi preaching obedience to God and parents, but also love for the enemy and forgiveness for the sins of Mankind.
The Christians.
What better way to annoy or at least claim victory over one’s oppressors than to forgive said oppressors for their sin of oppression?
Therein lies the key to the success of the followers of Christ as they broke from the guilt-laden tradition of Judaism and spread the Word of forgiveness across western civilization, revolting against the idea that an angry, merciless God was watching their every move, and instead conferring absolution, that is, the tenet that if one gave oneself wholly to the worship of the God of Abraham, indeed, that if one renounced all other gods and idols, the blood on one’s hands, literal or figurative would be washed clean, and furthermore, with that conversion, one would be re-born into the Kingdom of Heaven, even if one’s mortal body died on earth.
This break with the traditional emphasis for the corporeal, temporal body in return for the eternal, ephemeral soul is what initially divided the Judaic religion from the Christian with Jesus Christ as the Messiah leading the way back to Paradise at God’s side.
That is not to say that the Jews do not believe in a Messiah, they just don’t believe it was Jesus. Similarly, while Muslims recognize Jesus as a prophet of peace, they confer the title of Messiah or Messenger unto their own Mohammed.

People of the Book.

Ironically, while most of today’s Scripture in both the Judaic and Christian tradition comes from innumerable translations and recordings from countless sources and interpretations, followers of both religions are considered “people of the Book” by those of the third group of “sons of Abraham”, Muslims, who revere a man who undoubtedly lived during the seventh century CE and recorded a fairly simple (in comparison) set of rules in the Koran (meaning “the Book”) which has remained the same for nearly 1,500 years.
As Mohammed was noted for his great skill in mediating quarrels amongst the feuding Bedouin tribes of the Arab peninsula through diplomatic negotiations so Islam became a conglomerate of values with rewards both tangible and ephemeral.
For example, Islam preaches social responsibility to orphans and widows (the unfortunately bereaved from said tribal warfare) through the giving of alms. Muslims also strive to attain admittance to an ethereal Heaven, a land of milk and honey, as it were, where one eternally basks in the glory of God.
It seems then, that Islam, might be the happy mean of earlier Hebrew emphasis on land and family along with a Christian theme of eternal salvation with a healthy dose of pagan undercurrents such as reverence for cows, wives, etc.

If only it were so simple.

It is no small irony that the Book-- be it Torah, Bible, or Koran has lead to nearly every bloody feud within the history of Western civilization, and it is precisely the zealous misinterpretation of the Book and the God thereof which makes me believe He must shed bitter tears over the ashes and rubble in which this land lays under his name.

Returning to my initial query of why? Why were we attacked? Moreover, why do we respond to violence with violence?
The answer seems self-evident? Why Ask why?
It is because we are petty. It is because we are left be children whose parents never grew up. It is because we have millions of precedents leading us down a bloody trail with only a handful leady to that proverbial land of milk and honey.
It is because we as a species have stagnated and refuse to evolve in a compassionate, humane way.
The Christian philosopher Pere de Teillard prophesied an ultimate goal for humanity he called “the Omega Point”. It is a point where our earthly matter and intention melds with the spiritual, and godly. A point where we would meet the expectations of our heavenly Father.

To date we are lacking.

But I suspect we have the keys to the heavenly gate within our grasp.

If we take a moment to look at several of the other religions which hold sway over the hearts and minds of millions of followers on this planet, I think we can find a path to salvation, here on Earth as well as in Heaven.

Eastern religions (Hindu, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Shinto)

Though certainly one might insult the followers of these faiths by coupling them under one label and simplifying it into such easy terms, one might also pay compliment, because all these faiths have a common ingredient, which also, coincidentally follows the most basic laws of physics, that being the Tao, or conventionally “the way”, or as a scientist might understand it that a body of matter tends to stay at rest and when mover, follows the easiest and most direct route of navigation. Reincarnation is also central to these religions, which in scientific terms might translate to the first law of thermodynamics in which matter is neither created or destroyed but is changed from one form to another via energy. The cow dies and is reborn as a human. A human dies and is transmuted into a spirit. A spirit returns to the corporeal world as a rat. Etc. The universe is a wheel, and the cycles of life and death are exactly so---cycles, circles, hoops, and so on.
Eastern religions have much to offer in the same traditions—fables, proverbs, parables as Western, yet, perhaps because of the population density of the Orient (India, China, Indonesia) there is more emphasis placed on understanding the human body and the rudimentary needs thereof. Through yoga, meditation, and holistic medicines, many adherents to these faiths have managed to sustain life under conditions, which most Westerners would consider impoverished at best.

So who’s right?

In a world of increasingly scarce resources, it is tempting to fall back on the idea of social Darwinism: might makes right, survival of the fittest.
Yet, if the basic rights of humankind enable survival of the individual regardless of how fit, we have to abandon Victorian morality and somehow incorporate the East and the West into new traditions.
This is being done today in a number of religious and pseudo religious structures including Mormonism, where the rewards of Abrahamic faith are tangible in the form of jobs, homes, and community within the church; Christian Scientists where group prayer and dietary restrictions often provide a more healthy body; and Scientologists (with whom Christian Scientists are often confused) also provide for a healthier body and community via their methods, just to name a few.
One can also find a renewed interest in pagan traditions, which hark back to Druidic times such as the practice of Wicca and West African animism and voodoo.
Within the last 200 years there has even arisen a very strong cult which has endeavored to encompass all the foundations of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and so forth in their approach at peaceful, holistic living, the Baha'i, who, in my opinion have constructed the most beautiful temples of worship on Earth, despite, or perhaps because of their message of universal peace and love.
That said, I am still doubtful that they have reached Teillard’ s Omega Point.
No, I believe we need to “evolve” into something more, and that Day of Reckoning, as it were, has yet to come. Although, that said, it may be that it has already come and gone at least once.
The German philosopher Johann Huisinga said that he thought humankind had evolved beyond homo sapiens into homo ludens, effectively the “people who know”, into “the people who laugh”. So, no longer is it the function of our lives just to know about ourselves and our surroundings, but also to take pleasure and enjoyment in the things that we discover.
I believe this ideology is the one that we need to follow as a species that is strive to better ourselves while at the same time just trying to survive on a tiny blue planet in an infinitely large void.
The funny thing is, we may well have already reached that point thousands of years ago.
Anthropologist Lyle Watson writes about a group of early humans called the Strandloopers who lived on the beaches of the Ivory Coast in western South Africa. They are an anthropological curiosity as their bones show that they had unseemingly large heads attached to very small, child-like bodies. They left no lasting signs of civilization such as fortifications or much more than the most rudimentary tools, and yet he idolizes them. You see, he has a vision, which I rather like as well, in which these humans made an evolutionary jump far ahead than their contemporary Homo sapiens and became something else, humans with huge brains so large that they eliminated the need for crude tools and the objects of war. Instead they lived naked and free, playing on the beach and napping after simple meals provided by the fauna caught in rocky tide pools. They contemplated the world around them, and took pleasure in raising their small families peacefully under the warm sun and comforting stars. The Strandloopers disappeared without leaving much to account for their existence but a few graves here and there and the imagination of the occasional scientist and his students. The point he tries to make is that maybe humans have already reached the pinnacle of their evolution there by the seas, and after a brief bright speck of light in the evolutionary time line, it quietly burned out. I think back on my journey to the Island of Naxos far out in the Aegean Sea and the beautiful, sun-browned people I found there. My distant Greek cousins have a lovely perspective on life. All the young people are gorgeous; the women are lithe and willowy while the men are supple and strong. They all have a zest, a vibrancy for life, and they live their days fully, devoting equal portions of their time to work, rest, and play. Their island gleams like an incandescent lily in a turquoise sea, and their flocks of goats dot the craggy, flower-covered mountains like satyrs out of a myth. They eat their fill of sumptuous meals and drink and smoke and make merry. By their thirties they all shrink in height while they broaden in girth and no one seems to care a bit. They have perspective; a magnificent sense of perspective and my days there despite a horrible case of bronchitis and bad sunburn were some of my happiest. Perhaps the Strandloopers, Homo ludens are still very much alive. In fact, I’m sure of it.




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